Jordi Muñoz, at first glance: young — 24, in fact — bespectacled, slim, 6-foot-1 and surrounded by wires and circuits, gyros and motherboards.

He could be just another float in the passing nerd parade, an oversized boy with overpriced toys. And while this San Diego resident is revered as a genius in his field, his field is — insert joke here — drones.

Spend time with Muñoz, though, and you’ll find that his drones are not your grandfather’s dweeby remote-controlled toys. This beardless youth lacks formal training, credentials or degrees, but he’s wagering his future on the idea that UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) will revolutionize society.

And some smart people are gambling that he’s right.

“He has this almost animal instinct for hot, rising technologies,” said Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. “He was on to this way before me.”

Anderson and Muñoz co-founded 3D Robotics, a two-year-old Kearny Mesa company that wants to be a one-stop shop for all your drone needs. Those needs will be many, the owners insist. Drones, they say, will deliver packages, direct firefighters to hot spots, patrol the border and measure toxins spewing from disaster sites like Japan’s Fukushima reactor.

If so, in a decade drones may become as common as personal computers.

Still. Drones.

So: who is Jordi Muñoz? A blossoming industry’s Bill Gates? Or a general in the Geek Air Force?

40 boards

Born in Ensenada and raised in Tijuana, Jordi comes from a middle class family. The boy was fascinated by planes and computers, and he seemed to have a near-instinctive grasp of electronics. The teen quickly became a go-to guru in the online community of UAV gearheads.

“Here,” he said, “I got all the support immediately — super-fast.”

Elsewhere, though, support was lacking. He was denied admission to Instituto Politécnico Nacional, an MIT-like university in Mexico City. He studied a year at Ensenada’s CETYS, the Centro de Enseñanza Técnica y Superior, but remained impatient.

In 2007, he married his girlfriend, an American living in Ensenada, then moved to Riverside.

Waiting for his green card, the newlywed was unable to work, enroll in college, get a driver’s license. To help the idle husband pass the time, his mother gave Muñoz a radio-controlled helicopter. The cheap machine flew like a wounded sparrow and landed like a brick.

Muñoz tore it apart. Designed a new autopilot. And re-launched a sleek, swift, stable machine.

With little else to do, he devoured online tutorials, swapped ideas with other hobbyists, delving deeper into the mechanics of autopilots, servos, GPS systems. He built and launched his own drone.

His costs: a few hundred dollars.

“The closest competition,” he said, “asks about $20,000.”

Around this time, the tech-happy editor of Wired began researching drones. Anderson was stunned when he saw an online video of Muñoz using his customized Wii controller to fly a small helicopter. The two men struck up an email correspondence.

All he could do was admire the guy’s work, which was brilliant. Assembled from simple designs and inexpensive parts, his aircraft emphasized speed and stability. When Anderson started a drone business, he offered the presidency to Muñoz.

“Ten years ago,” Anderson said, “I would have ended up with a recent graduate from Stanford. That would have been fine, but we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

In May 2009, 3D Robotics was born in Muñoz’s apartment when Anderson asked his partner to make some circuit boards, then use his contacts to peddle them.

“I made 40,” Muñoz said, “and sold them all in one day.”

Mainframe vs. PC

In its short history, 3D Robotics has had several physical offices — apartments, garages and, as of last September, a Kearny Mesa warehouse. But its true location has always been online. At diydrones.com, its wares are displayed for the world to see.

The world is responding. Orders come from hobbyists sitting at computers in China and Germany, as well as researchers for NASA, MIT, Boeing and General Atomics.

That first month, Muñoz tallied almost $5,000 in revenues. “I felt I was super-rich.”

By June 2010, revenues hit $56,000.

By March 2011, $164,000.

The company is profitable enough for Muñoz to hire 11 staffers and pay himself $5,000 a month. Not bad for a startup, yet 3D Robotics remains a gnat among eagles. Poway’s General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, for instance, sold 268 MQ-1 Predator drones to the U.S. Air Force. List price: $5 million apiece for an aircraft that could fly reconnaisance and surveillance missions over Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan, without risk to pilot or crew.

Even outside the military, though, demand for drones is climbing. At the U.S. Department of Justice, Michael O’Shea fields calls from police departments across the country, curious about the technology.

“The question is,” noted O’Shea, Justice’s law enforcement program manager, “can this be a low-cost solution for agencies that can’t afford a helicopter?”

The answer: maybe. Muñoz’s quadrocopters can fly eight miles each way, a camera amid four whirling propellers, relaying video images back to the operator. Anyone, from a real estate agent to Steven Spielberg, could use this technology today to film vivid overhead footage of a house or a dramatic scene.

Fans envision a day when drones will replace TV stations’ eye-in-the-sky traffic reporters.

Even a day when drones replace FedEx jets, flying cross-country with the help of computer programs and without an onboard pilot.

“Autonomy is the future of aviation in the same way that autonomy is the future of cars,” Anderson insisted. “We know that computers drive cars better than people do — we use cruise control, and there are systems to keep you in your lane.”

Reaching this future will require streamlining the FAA’s cumbersome process used to certify drones for commercial use. Anderson argues that drones are now in the “mainframe era,” when cost and regulations limit use to well-funded labs and the military.

“Our approach,” he said, “is the personal computer.”

In other words, a world in which drones are household tools, no more exotic than a microwave oven.

Muñoz already inhabits this world. Recently, his computer’s wobbly Internet access made him wonder if a storm had blown over a rooftop antenna. Instead of grabbing a ladder and climbing onto the roof, he launched a camera-equipped drone.

Turned out, the antenna was fine — and Muñoz still had no clue why his Internet was so sketchy.